I Don’t Recognize My Own House

My first wife is sooo excited. Her brother is bringing his whole family down for a visit. She has been trying to get him to come see us for years. I am excited for her. But I’m also counting; he’s got children and grandchildren, a son-in-law, or two….

“Cathy, where are we going to sleep 36 people?” She quickly assuaged my fears, “They want to stay at the beach. We’re going to rent them a house.”

Oh, there is a God in Heaven! We’re not running a hotel over here.

This is a pretty big deal. Bobby Brown Cotham is a typical West Tennessee country boy. He is quiet, polite, and treats every human being with the utmost courtesy and respect. He doesn’t often venture far from his house, if you don’t count the trips over to Knoxville during the football season to see the Volunteers play.

I have known him since he was ten years old. And I don’t want to cast aspersions on my wife or her sisters, but it is fairly well known by all in our extended family circle, Bobby is the best one of that bunch.

It will be good to see him, and catch up on recent happenings in West Tenne— “Honey,” Cathy interrupted my thoughts, “you might want to move that pile of boards in front of the shed. Maybe put them in the back, out of sight.”

“Well, I was thinking I might need them for— “And while you are out there, you could trim the back hedge and the one between the house and the garage.”

“Cathy, they are staying at the beach!”

I don’t think she heard me. Because just as I finished raking up the last of the clippings, she strolled out and pointed towards the front yard, “Since you’ve got the trimmer out, the horseshoe hedge could use a going over.”

Something wasn’t making sense here. And it wasn’t about to get any better.

It took me a couple of hours to work myself around the bending hedge. By the time I got everything put away, it was too late to go to the golf course. And I was too tired anyway. I was going to take a bath and find a John Wayne movie.

I thought.

Cathy was standing in the middle of our baseball locker room with the shop vac. I kid you not! She had all the bats out in the den; she’d already dusted them off. My job was to take every item out of the lockers, vacuum them out, then vacuum each jersey, undershirt, belt, shoe, glove…. and EVERY hat!

That may not sound like a lot to you, but there’s 42 gloves in there. And uniforms dating back to 1962. Caps and baseballs galore. Four pictures of Stan Musial, three batting helmets, two very special autographed major league jerseys, and a partridge in a pear tree….

I calmly (on the surface) mentioned again, these folks we are cleaning up for are staying at a beach house twenty miles away!

Wasn’t there a song from long ago, “We’ve Only Just Begun?” We moved from the locker room to the kitchen. She handed me the furniture polish and a rag. I immediately regretted enlarging that room years ago…and putting in all those cabinets!

We rented some kind of water induced, deep steam cleaning machine for the carpets. We bought a brand-new sofa and love seat for the den. We moved the very heavy antique bed away from the wall in our very personal and private bedroom (where we don’t invite anyone in no matter how kin they are) so she could clean the blinds behind it.

I began thinking, “We might be overdoing this thing.”

She pulled the two guitars out from under the bed in Jesse’s old room and had me wipe off the cases. I changed the lights in three different rooms because “the old ones were not bright enough.” Aw man, then we started cleaning windows. She wiped from the inside; I’m taking every screen off the outside….

Cathy made two trips to Sams to buy “all the things they might need” at the rental house, which, did I mention already, is not even remotely close to our house. If they drive straight down Highway 98 and then turn off towards Cape San Blas, they WON’T EVEN SEE OUR HOUSE!

Stuff like this will keep you up at night. We’ve done a total makeover for nothing. But while I was staring at the ceiling at two in the morning, I believe I came up with a solution. I’ve already started taking pictures….of everything!

The first day they arrive, I’m going out there with photo evidence of our ultra clean locker room, new furniture, evenly trimmed hedges, sparkling kitchen cabinets, windows you can actually see through, daisy fresh carpets, spotless guitar cases, and our new Elvis TV trays.

The only flaw in this plan might be the TV trays. Tennessee folks are drawn to Elvis like a moth to a backyard barn burning. They might just naturally want to come and take a look for themselves….

Respectfully,
Kes